KLD - Work at Oerlikon Bührle Computing Centre

I was ported from the Oerlikon Bührle Machine Tool Works (WO) to the OBRZ – I did not need to look for a new job myself. I managed a very dedicated team of three to four people. The following list of tasks is more or less in chronological order:

• Co-ordination, support and consultancy for technical and scientific programmers in the Bührle Group. Documentation of software and services.
• Set-up and supervision of VAX based services for technical and scientific programmers. Set-up of support for PC users.
• Develop concept for CAD on the MVS system.
• Document the services and software for technical programmers.
• Develop guidelines for the Bührle Group concerning document processing and acquisition of work stations.
• Program technical applications on the MVS system in FORTRAN including a subroutine library for graphical presentations.
• Develop a device driver for Versatec raster plotter to serve the needs of document output (5 character sets, highlighting, simple vector graphics, raster imbedding)
• Develop guidelines for data access and security and supervise implementation; security officer.
• Develop new corporate ID of OBRZ – it was to late for this…
• Specify a text formatter running on TSO/ISPF according to the needs for the documentation. My colleagues programmed it in Pascal.
• Write manuals about document processing at OBRZ including the organisation of the manuals.

During the time of OBRZ I was very active in SHARE Europe, a user group of large IBM users.

Oerlikon Bührle Computing Centre

OBRZ was founded in 1972 to provide information services for the companies of the Oerlikon Bührle Group. This included

• running a computing centre,
• software development and
• consultancy for all companies of the concern

From 1972 to 1981 every aspect of the company (storage, MIPs, staff count, throughput…) rose exponentially (staff count up to 115). From then key figures developed only linearly with about 20% growth every year – staff was decreased to 80 until 1983 and then stabilised on that level.

Staff was very stable – the turnover was below 1% per year! Nevertheless the company was nearly closed down (only 5 people left) and outsourced at the end of 1991 due to severe financial losses of the military activities of the Bührle Group (2.3 milliards CHF). The climate in OBRZ can be – for example – determined from my official badge which i had for the last five years of employement.